Roswell Biotechnologies
| Roswell Biotechnologies | |
|---|---|
| Formerly | (now listed as SemiconBio) |
| Industry | Molecular electronics, biosensors, DNA sequencing |
| Founded | 2014 |
| Founders | Paul Mola; Barry Merriman |
| Headquarters | San Diego, California, United States |
| Products | Roswell ME Chip |
Roswell Biotechnologies is a company in San Diego, California, that builds sensors in which a single molecule is a part of an electronic circuit. A molecule that binds a target, or an enzyme that works on one, is wired between two electrodes on a silicon chip, and the current through the circuit changes when something happens to it. The company calls the chip a molecular electronics chip. The signal is the electronic current through the molecule itself, where a nanopore sensor measures the ionic current of salt water flowing past one.[a]
In January 2022 the company and its collaborators reported a chip with 16,000 independent sensors in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.[3][4]
History
Roswell was founded in 2014, according to its release of May 5, 2020.[2] Paul Mola is its chief executive officer and Barry Merriman its co-founder and chief science officer.[5] That release announced a partnership with imec, the research center in Leuven, Belgium, to make the chips with industrial semiconductor tools. It called the product "the first commercially available molecular electronics biosensor chips", said that the two organizations had completed proof-of-concept work, and expected the first products on the market in 2021.[2]
The idea is older than the company. James Tour co-founded Molecular Electronics Corporation in 1999 to make single-molecule memory, and in 2000 he predicted that the technique would surpass silicon. By about 2005 flash memory dominated the market and silicon had kept its lead. The physicist Philip Collins, who has previously consulted for Roswell, estimated that nine in ten researchers left the field.[5] Tour was one of them. He now sits on Roswell's scientific advisory board.[5]
In March 2022 MIT Technology Review reported that the company had raised more than $60 million, and that it planned a commercial device by the end of 2022.[5]
Technology
A sensor on the ME Chip has three parts. Two nanoelectrodes are fabricated into the chip, a synthetic molecular wire spans the gap between them, and a probe molecule is attached to the wire at a central site. The wire in the 2022 chip is a peptide 25 nanometers long. The probe decides what the sensor detects, and the company lists DNA, aptamers, antibodies, antigens and enzymes as probes, among them CRISPR enzymes that bind target DNA.[4] When a target binds or an enzyme acts, the conductance of the wire changes, and the current, which is on the scale of picoamperes, changes with it. The chip samples the current at 1,000 frames a second and converts the record into digital data.[4]
The molecules reach the electrodes by assembly. A voltage applied to a chip with prefabricated nanoelectrodes draws the wires out of solution and onto the sites, and the article in MIT Technology Review says that this takes less than 10 seconds.[5] In the sequencing experiment the team put a DNA polymerase in the circuit. The team watched the enzyme copy DNA one nucleotide at a time, and used machine learning on the current to read the sequence.[4] Merriman said that diagnostics, sequencing, drug discovery and proteomics were the applications to commercialize next.[4] The paper has 51 authors, from the company and several universities.[3]
Name
On March 29, 2026, the founder of Molecular Reality Corporation, Kent Kemmish, posted a message about a paper on DNA flossing. He listed Roswell Biotechnologies, Two Pore Guys and his own demonpore, inc. as holders of "the three coolest/quirkiest names for a genomic tech startup ever". Next to Roswell he wrote: "(I was sooo jealous of this name!)". The message goes on: "Sadly, all three of us wimped out on our cool quirky names."[6] The industry newsletter Debye Length wrote on the same three names on October 12, 2026.[7] Two Pore Guys is now Ontera.
Relationship with Molecular Reality
The Hole World, the company's atlas of molecular-sensing groups, includes Roswell among 38 hand-captioned flagship entries, as a "Molecular electronics chip" drawn as a tunneling junction.[8] Roswell's sensors report at 1,000 frames a second.[4] The amplifier on the company's live molecular stream samples the current of a 200-micron laser-drilled pore 200,000 times a second.[9]
See also
Notes
References
- ^ "SemiconBio". CB Insights. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ a b c "Roswell Biotechnologies and imec to develop first molecular electronics biosensor chips for infectious disease surveillance, precision medicine and DNA storage" (Press release). Roswell Biotechnologies and imec. May 5, 2020. Retrieved October 25, 2026.
- ^ a b Fuller et al. (2022). "Molecular electronics sensors on a scalable semiconductor chip: a platform for single-molecule measurement of binding kinetics and enzyme activity". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119 (5): e2112812119. doi:10.1073/pnas.2112812119.
- ^ a b c d e f "Programmable biosensor chip uses single molecules to detect multiomic molecular interactions". Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology News. January 25, 2022.
- ^ a b c d e Karmela Padavic-Callaghan (March 31, 2022). "This startup wants to make electronics out of single molecules". MIT Technology Review.
- ^ Kemmishtree (March 29, 2026). "Flossing with DNA". EQBio-OS.
- ^ Ferris Calloway (October 12, 2026). "Notes on demonpore, Two Pore Guys and Roswell". Debye Length.
- ^ "The Hole World: build metadata". Molecular Reality Corporation. September 26, 2026.
- ^ "Keltar's Field Guide to Molecular Reality". Molecular Reality Corporation. August 2026.